One of the defining features of Google's Chrome web browse is its sandboxing feature. You probably won't realise it's there, but from a security point of view, sand-boxing is one of the most impotant factors in browser security, as it severely limits the amount of damage a security hole can do: sure, you've got a hole in the browser, but thanks to sandboxing, you're pretty much locked in - until you break out of the sandbox, of course. Sandboxing on the Windows variant of Chrome was a "complicated affair", says Chromium developer Jeremy Moskovich, but for the Mac version, it's all a bit easier and more straightforward. On Linux, however, it's a mess.

I think the open source and Linux communities see Google as an ally to them. At least there not the enemy like Microsoft. Not including Linux as a platform for Linux could harm the thought of Google being nice to open source and Linux.

Because Google uses Ubuntu quite a bit I bet they would like to use their own browser on their machines. They could have said we use Ubuntu so that's where we will support sandboxing, but they are going out of the way to find something that works for everyone.

If the chrome devs hate Linux so much, why don't they just refuse to support it?

Maybe because there's constant vocal demand for it. Every time Chrome news is posted anywhere, regardless of what it's about, there's always at least one person going "Where's the Linux version? When are they gonna release for Linux? Why does Google hate Linux?"

Getting a bit sick and tired of hearing nothing more than a stream of complaints from this lot.